Harry Potter and the Proof of Concept
by dukeofpoorplanning
Summary: The Dursleys resolved to have as little involvement, positive or negative, in Harry's life as possible, and when he finally receives his Hogwarts letter, Harry isn't what people were expecting: intelligent, calculating, and proud, Harry is set to take the wizarding world by storm, starting by building a group of worthwhile friends. (Independent!Harry, Fem!Draco)


**I do not, in any way, shape, or form, own Harry Potter. Also, important note: this story is effectively being discontinued, although I'm not sure that'she really the right word for it, since I never intended to continue it past the first chapter from the time I first uploaded it. Harry Potter and the Proof of Concept is just that: _a proof of concept._ There's a sixth and seventh year story I'm working on that's something of a spiritual successor, but this story _won't be updated or continued,_ much less concluded.**

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><p><em>"Why aren't you sitting with the other Gryffindors?"<em>

_"Because I understand you; you've got a good reason for wanting to keep me around. That's what I like about Slytherins: if you're clever enough, you can figure out what they want based on their actions. Gryffindors, though? They don't have any reason for worshiping me, they just do."_

_"You're different than what I was expecting. More Slytherin."_

_"Not enough, apparently. The hat told me my pride gets in the way of my pragmatism, and it was right."_

_"The way you're talking about it proves that there's _some_ hope for you, yet, Potter."_

_"I'm thrilled to have your approval, Malfoy."_

_"Well you should be. And I _suppose_ you can call me 'Cynthia.'"_

_"Only if you call me 'Harry.'"_

_"Agreed."_

_"Why do I get the feeling that I've just struck a deal with the devil?"_

_"I can't imagine."_

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><p>A letter was the last thing that Harry had ever expected to receive. He made a point of returning his library books early, and no one had any other reasons to write to him that he was aware of: he had no family, and he didn't allow himself to excel academically, as he knew he could if not for the attention that it would draw to him. And yet, receive one he did one fateful day in early July of 1991.<p>

There was no question of his having received it in error: it was addressed using his full name, and it even included the room, or rather, the _cupboard_ in which he slept, though he couldn't imagine why. Unless of course whoever had sent it was worried that there might be another "Henry James Potter" living at Number Four Privet Drive, in which case Harry supposed that he could understand the specificity.

Of course, it was always possible, and much more likely, that it was addressed thus to make some sort of point, but Harry felt that this was a lot less interesting than the idea that somebody might have thought that he lived with somebody whom he shared his full name with, so he filed it away in the "maybe" category for the time being.

Harry made his way to the local library and took his usual seat in the corner furthest from the windows. Feeling inexplicably paranoid, Harry collected a small stack of books to hide himself from view. He usually had such a collection whenever he came to the library, so he doubted that his doing so would arouse any undue suspicion.

Pulling out the letter from under his shirt (he had tucked it into his belt to hide it from his relatives while he cleaned up after breakfast in between collecting the mail and going to the library. It was perhaps lucky for him that he was forced to wear his cousin's old clothes, as it meant that his shirt fell far enough beneath his waist that it hid the letter completely.), Harry properly examined it for the first time. The envelope was made of an odd sort of paper with which Harry was unfamiliar: it was coarse, thick, and oddly heavy. Heavy for paper, at any rate. The only return address on it was "Hogwarts School," and it completely failed to mention where exactly said school was located, which, Harry knew, defeated the purpose of including a return address in the first place.

The letter inside was every bit as odd: it opened with a list of the Headmaster's distinctions, which immediately had Harry scratching his head. He had no idea what a "Chief Mugwump" was, and he wasn't altogether certain that he _wanted_ to know, either. As for the "Order of Merlin" (first class, whatever that meant), his classification as a "Grand Sorcerer," and the fact that he was evidently the "Chief Warlock" of something or other, Harry was rather certain, between the three of them, that this Albus Dumbledore, whoever he was, had gone to great lengths to impress him.

It also convinced Harry, before he had even read the contents of the letter itself, that the entire thing was a hoax. Exactly how elaborate it was, he would only know once he had read the rest of what had been sent to him, and he did so, if only out of curiosity. The rest of the first sheet was a rather boring message that explained to Harry that he had been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and that Minerva McGonagall (whoever that was) was evidently thrilled to have him. After a wholly unloving upbringing, Harry didn't believe for a second that anybody, much less a complete stranger, would care that much about him one way or the other: even the Dursleys didn't care about him enough to _hate_ him, only to resent him. The letter also mentioned that his ticket was enclosed, so Harry gathered that he was meant to arrive at this supposed school by either boat, plane, bus, or train.

Next up was a list, which took up two double-sided sheets of paper, of everything that he would need for school: books (_lots_ of books), quill and parchment (which explained the odd paper of the letter and its envelope, although why a school would insist on its students using a quill and parchment when pens and notebook paper were infinitely more convenient, Harry could only guess), at least five uniforms (which, Harry thought, was rather non-specific, given that it didn't mention what said uniforms consisted of), a magic wand, potions ingredients, and various odds and ends such as a telescope, a cauldron, and a set of phials for potions and their ingredients.

The enclosed train ticket, which was for the "Hogwarts Express," claimed that said train left from platform "nine-and-three-quarters" of King's Cross Station on September first, which Harry found distinctly suspicious, given that it was entirely impossible.

All in all, Harry was distinctly impressed with whomever had set all of this up: not only was there an impressive amount of detail, but certain pieces of crucial information had been left out in such a way that it suggested that it ought to have been common knowledge to witches and wizards, which was a nice touch. Harry idly wondered who exactly was responsible for it all, since he knew perfectly well that it couldn't have been the Dursleys. They quite simply didn't care enough about him to go to the trouble of tormenting him like this, and even if they did, they were far and away the most humorless people whom Harry had ever had the misfortune of knowing. That said, whomever _had_ sent the letter knew that he lived in the cupboard under the stairs, which was information that he was far from forthcoming about.

Harry wondered whether he could safely ignore this. To bring it to his Uncle's attention would be to reveal the fact that he had opened the letter, which he knew perfectly well would make Vernon less-than-thrilled. Even so, he knew that the Dursleys weren't complicit in the prank, which made the amount of information that the sender knew about him worrying.

Harry gave the matter some thought, and eventually realised that, unless and until the sender followed up on the letter, it didn't particularly matter. If he got another letter like it, he would show it to Vernon and Petunia, which would earn him some brownie points, as much as he hated lowering himself to doing so. If nothing else happened, then the prank didn't amount to anything, and was safe to ignore.

Satisfied with his conclusions, Harry replaced the papers in the envelope and took one of the textbooks from the pile he had gathered earlier to hide himself. Smiling to himself, Harry opened the book and began to read, taking the time to make sure he understood the content, which he had already studied extensively. He didn't know if he could truly call himself "_fluent_" in French, as he didn't know anybody who spoke it, but he had been studying the language for four years, and was confident that he could at least hold an intelligent conversation in it, particularly if he could find someone to study with.

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><p>Sure enough, Harry received another letter the next day, one whose exterior was identical to the previous one's, from which Harry gathered that the <em>interior<em> was, too. Harry had kept the first letter for curiosity's sake, but he gave the second one to Vernon, asking what exactly it was about, ("I've never applied to any schools other than Stonewall High, have I?") which elicited a fascinating response from him.

"Who'd be writing to _you_?" he demanded, tugging the letter out of Harry's hand.

_If I knew, I wouldn't be handing the thing to you, would I?_ Harry thought wryly.

When he read the return address, however, Vernon first flushed, then paled. "Petunia!" he gasped, holding the letter at arm's length with trembling hands.

"What is it, dear?" Petunia asked, walking over to him from the sink, which she had been scrubbing unnecessarily. Vernon didn't answer, although it seemed he didn't need to: the moment she saw the letter, Petunia went as pale as her husband and hastily took a seat.

After that, Vernon shooed Harry and his cousin, Dudley, out of the kitchen to discuss their options. The two boys had, of course, remained just outside the kitchen door to eavesdrop, although they hadn't caught much of what was said. All Harry could gather was that someone whom they only called "he" had assured the Dursleys that Harry wasn't "freakish," which was evidently the only reason why they had taken him in after his parents' deaths and that the plan was to ignore the letters and hope that the senders would give up.

Soon afterwords Vernon sought out Harry in his cupboard (to which he had promptly returned, lest he be discovered listening in) and ordered him to relocate to the spare bedroom upstairs, which had previously been used as Dudley's personal storage room for all of his broken or unused possessions, which he had a great many of. For the first time, Harry seriously considered the possibility that the letter _hadn't_ been a hoax, after all.

The very next day, Harry received yet another letter, this one's address altered to accommodate his change in bedrooms. This, in Harry's opinion, settled the matter: a wizarding school was trying to recruit him, which would be great, if only he had the slightest possible idea of how to get in contact with them.

The next few days were almost entirely more of the same: Harry getting somewhere between five and a dozen letters every day while Vernon slowly lost his grip on reality in his many failed attempts to prevent the letters from reaching his home. On the morning of July 29th, just two days before Harry's eleventh birthday, he had finally had enough.

After demanding that everyone pack what they would need for the next few days (Dudley, for reasons best known to himself, had attempted to pack his television and computer, which led to some interesting results), Vernon drove, seemingly without any sort of destination, for the rest of the day, stopping only well into the night to allow them all to sleep in a cheap motel. The next morning, naturally, the hotel received "about a 'undred" letters, all addressed to Harry, who was left to idly speculate whether or not that was an exaggeration.

As had perhaps been inevitable from the very start, Vernon then decided that the next logical step was for the four of them to hide themselves in a small cottage on a god-forsaken rock, which was located in the _precise_ middle of Nowhere. It was in that cottage that Harry, curled up into a tiny ball and wrapped as tightly as he could manage in the thinnest, most ragged blanket in the building, fell asleep on the eve of his eleventh birthday.

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><p>Harry had been having a pleasant dream about studying in peace when he was rudely and abruptly jolted back to reality by a great crashing noise. Leaping to his feet, Harry allowed the blanket to fall to the floor and made his way cautiously to the door, which had been the source of the noise. If Harry hadn't known better, he would have thought that it was somebody knocking, but it was much too loud for that.<p>

When the noise sounded again, it perfectly coincided with the door shaking, which punched a hole in Harry's belief that it wasn't somebody knocking. Harry quickly revised his previous theory to "it was much too loud to be a _normal_ person knocking."

With one more knock, the door was blown out of its hinges and into the cottage. It was immediately followed by a man whom Harry could only describe as a giant, who casually picked the door up and replaced it in its original position, acting as though this were the most natural thing in the world. "Haven't got any tea, have you?" he asked, looking around the room with a hopeful expression.

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><p>"All this is mine?" Harry asked in wonder, staring around at the massive piles of gold, silver, and bronze all around him. He absently pulled his bangs down to cover his scar, something that he had been doing unconsciously ever since he and Hagrid had left the Leaky Cauldron.<p>

"All this and more," Hagrid replied happily.

"_More?_" Harry asked incredulously. What he was seeing in front of him was enough gold to easily equal _at least_ a million pounds, probably more. If this vault was only part of what he owned . . .

"The Potters are a very old family," Griphook said carelessly. "Theirs is among the larger fortunes in the British branch of Gringotts Bank, and you are its sole heir."

Harry stared around him in wonder. He had no idea how large or small a portion this was of the supposed "Potter fortune," but he would guess that it leaned more towards being a smaller fraction than the majority, if for no other reason than the fact that Hagrid had mentioned that the biggest vaults were located in the lowest sections of the bank, and it was clear enough that the vault in which Harry was standing was in the middle. If anything, he would guess that it was closer to the top than the bottom.

"Griphook," he said carefully, turning to face him. He remembered Hagrid's warning about offending goblins, and thus resolved to address them all as respectfully as possible without having to grovel. "Would it be possible to have a summary of all my assets made for me? I grew up in the muggle world, and this is the first time I'm learning about my family."

"We shall have such a document for you by the end of the day, Mr Potter," Griphook replied, seeing no reason to refuse him. He found the boy reasonably agreeable (for a wizard), and while he felt no desire to go out of his way on the child's behalf, Griphook also recognised that everyone, even a wizard, deserved to know about their family history, and it seemed that the boy hadn't yet had any opportunity to learn.

Harry nodded gratefully and set about collecting some coins. He asked Hagrid what he would need to buy his school supplies and doubled it, planning on buying as much books on magical theory and the wizarding world as he could.

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><p>Per Harry's request, they started with Flourish and Blotts, where Harry purchased all of the books on his course list, in addition to several other books. He bought books on magical transportation (figuring that he would probably want to come back to the alley sooner rather than later), recent history in the magical world, well-known families in wizarding Britain, spell theory (which would hopefully help him with his work in Charms and Transfiguration), potions ingredients, defensive magic, important places in wizarding Britain, and whatever else he found even mildly interesting.<p>

Their next stop was to the magical storage shop, which was called (much to Harry's amusement) Magical STOREage, where Harry bought a magically expanded messenger bag and trunk, both of which were charmed to only ever weigh what they would be able to carry had their interiors not been expanded. The trunk had three compartments, all of which were opened by inserting the correct key into the correct lock, that were (surprisingly, at least to Harry) the same size on the inside as the outside. The bag, meanwhile, was expanded to carry three times what it should have been able to, though it was fairly small, and still only able to hold a little more than the backpack Harry had used for his first few years of (muggle) school.

After taking care of that, Hagrid took Harry to the alley's courier service. Hagrid arranged to have Harry's trunk stored there for the day, where they would periodically return to deposit his supplies into it. Hagrid explained that the trunk would be delivered to the the Dursleys' house at the end of the day, thus saving them from having to carry it on the Underground. When Harry asked how it would be delivered before they arrived if it had to be sent after they left the alley, Hagrid had only chuckled and recommended that Harry give his book on transportation a read as soon as possible, which he had been intending to do in any event.

They next went to the apothecary, where Harry purchased more ingredients than he would need for his classes. After skimming his potions textbook briefly, Harry realised that, while many of the potions in it were effectively useless for anything beyond practising potion-brewing as a whole, a few were the sorts of things that he would like to have on hand. Harry knew that brewing his own potions from purchased ingredients would be both more difficult and much cheaper than purchasing those made by others, and so he got plenty of everything.

After that, the two of them went around the alley, collecting the various odds and ends that Hogwarts required before returning to the courier to store everything in Harry's trunk. Because the next leg of Harry's journey was one that would require some waiting around on both of their parts, Hagrid went out to purchase their lunches while Harry was left to be fitted for his uniform.

He soon found that his guess for why the letter didn't explain what he needed to purchase for his uniform had been accurate: the moment he stepped inside the shop, a kindly-looking middle-aged woman greeted Harry with a genuine smile, asked if he was there for his Hogwarts uniforms, and directed him to the back of the shop, where "we've another one getting fitted, now."

Harry thanked the woman and walked tentatively to the back of the shop, where he was directed to a stool next to a blond girl his own age by yet another smiling witch. While she set off to grab another set of uniforms for Harry, he took a seat and turned to face the girl next to him, who was eyeing him curiously.

"Hello," they both said at the same time.

Harry grinned, though the girl didn't. "First year at school, then?" she asked carelessly. Harry nodded, assuming that she was referring specifically to magical schools. "It's mine, as well. What house do you think you'll end up in?"

"I'm not really sure. I've hear that both of my parents were in Gryffindor, but I've always spent so much time studying and reading, so I might go to Ravenclaw, too. Slytherin sounds good, but my guide doesn't think highly of it, and I'm not sure I'm cunning enough, anyway. What about you?"

The girl raised her eyebrows, noting the odd ways in which Harry had phrased things, though she didn't comment. "I'll be in Slytherin, my whole family has been. Who's showing you around and criticising Slytherin?"

"It's the gamekeeper, Hagrid. He's a nice man, but I don't think he's particularly bright, so I've been taking a lot of what he's said with a grain of salt."

"Well, don't worry about Slytherin," she replied, evidently pleased with his answer. "A lot of ignorant and stupid people think that it's made up of evil students, but it's not really true. And you don't need to worry about being cunning enough to get in, either," she added, a little bitterly. "Most people these days get sorted into it because it's where their families ended up, not because they really belong there."

Before Harry could reply to that, the young woman who had sat him down came bustling back in with a set of robes for him and turned to the girl. "You're all set, dear," she informed her as she indicated a small pile of clothes, which the girl collected with a nod. Before she left, she turned back to Harry, who was currently being measured, and spoke.

"My name's Cynthia Malfoy. I expect I'll see you on the train, Potter." And with that, she left.

Harry frowned: it hadn't escaped his notice that he had never told her his name.

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><p>After Harry was fitted for black shoes and slacks, a white button-up shirt, and a grey weskit and black tie (which he was told was charmed to change colours so that it would reflect his house), the witch magically altered another six sets of the same outfit, so that Harry had seven of everything (except for the shoes, which he still only had one set of). He also bought a thick, black cloak for the winter, three sets of robes to wear over his uniforms, and ten pairs of socks, figuring that one could rarely have too many socks.<p>

With his clothes shopping taken care of, Harry and Hagrid returned once more to the courier to store Harry's clothes in his trunk. Harry had already worked out a system for storing his purchases whereby he placed all required items in the first compartment, all of his clothes in the third, and everything else, including duplicates of required items, in the second. That way, his trunk would look like that of a model Hogwarts student to any who gave it a cursory glance, but would still contain everything he needed and wanted.

After a quick and late lunch, Hagrid sent Harry to the wand shop, claiming that purchasing one's first wand is the sort of experience that one oughtn't intrude on, while he himself went on some mysterious errand.

It took almost twenty minutes for Ollivander, the owner and proprietor of the alley's only wand shop, to find Harry a wand that seemed to elicit any response from him. After giving him one wand after another for him to wave around foolishly, the old man eventually walked into the backroom, emerging moments later carrying yet another small box, which he handed to Harry, as he had all the others.

The moment he picked the wand up, Harry felt a burst of what he would later come to recognise as pure, concentrated, magic, and a veritable fireworks display of multi-coloured sparks shot out of its tip. Ollivander sold the wand to Harry with a few unsettlingly cryptic comments about how Harry's affinity for this particular wand (seemingly to the exclusion of all others) was peculiar, which, with a bit of prodding, led to his confession that Harry's wand shared a core with Voldemort's.

It was therefore quite lucky that Hagrid's errand, the nature of which he had refused to elaborate on earlier, had been to purchase Harry a remarkably thoughtful birthday present: a magnificent, pure white owl, which cheered Harry right up.

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><p>"Harry?" Hagrid asked concernedly as they sat together in a small restaurant back in Surrey. "Are you alright? You seem a bit out of it."<p>

Harry put down his fork, frowning, as he considered how to respond. "It's just," he began slowly, "everyone seems to be expecting so much from me, and I don't know if I can keep up with it all. All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, everyone on the streets who recognised me, even Mr Ollivander. They all seem to think that I'm some sort of prodigy, or something, that I'll somehow compare to Voldemort." Harry frowned slightly at Hagrid's shudder, feeling it rather childish to react so fearfully to the mere mention of a name. Harry felt that, if Voldemort was really as terrifying as everybody seemed to think he was, then any reference to him, even one made using a euphemistic name like "You-Know-Who," should be rattling, not just ones that specifically mentioned his chosen (Harry rather doubted that "Voldemort" was his real name, and he knew enough French to know exactly what the moniker implied) name. "But I don't know if I can keep up with it all. I'm only learning about the entire wizarding world now! How can I possibly hope to-"

"Harry," Hagrid said sternly, cutting him off mid-rant, "you'll do _fine_ plenty of students don't learn about all this stuff any earlier than you did, and they all learn fast enough. You have nothing to worry about." Harry, although he recognised that Hagrid hadn't really addressed his true concern, nodded.

As he finished his meal, Harry decided that there was only one thing to do: learn as much as he possibly could about the wizarding world before he fully joined it in a month's time.

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><p><strong>AN: Fair warning: potentially boring information about the world and authorial intent ahead. If you aren't interested in that, this AN is gonna be <em>really<em> tedious. That said: yo****u can assume that if I didn't mention something, it happened either very similarly or completely identically to its cannon counterpart. I know that a lot of people are probably wary of so-called "independent!Harry" fics; I know _I_ am. My goal here was to have Harry be his own entity separate from Dumbledore without him being James Potter mk ii, or having Dumbledore and the Weasleys being every bit as bad as Voldemort.**

**It really bothers me that there are so few stories on this site that feature a Harry who wants to do his own thing and make his own decisions without being a complete twat about _everything_, so I set out to remedy it. Then I got a much better idea than this one and decided to post this chapter as a story because why not? As for the reason for Draco being replaced with Cynthia, I wanted for Harry to have an ally in Slytherin, and she can fill that role much better than Draco could, the reasons for which have everything to do with the differences between how Lucius Malfoy would raise a son as opposed to a daughter. That, and I've recently developed a weird interest in fem!Malfoy fics.**** On an unrelated note, the reason why I'm using the movie versions of the Hogwarts uniforms is that they look cooler. It's really that simple, unfortunately.**

**The only reason I'm posting this at all is that I really like the way it opens, but I don't have any other stories going or planned right now that could use the same concept, at least, not very effectively. The idea for this story was a full AU rewrite, though I decided to go for another AU with similar themes that starts at the end of fifth year because of a _brilliant_ idea I had for it. More on that once it's actually posted. In any event, I was going to have each chapter of this story be called Book X, Chapter Y (a la Prince of the Dark Kingdom, which you should totally read the first 99 1/2 chapters of), and each "book" would open with a conversation like the one above. The idea was I take the most important (non-spoiler) conversation from the entire book, then put it at the beginning without any context or narration. It gets the reader guessing about who's talking to whom, and about what, but it doesn't give any spoilers. T****he conversation in the beginning is between Harry and Cynthia (obviously) during their first Potions lesson, for which the former elects to sit with the latter rather than his housemates.**

**Harry in this is more prideful, but he isn't comfortable with attention, nor is he particularly _arrogant_. Cynthia, because she's known her entire life that she's pretty much being raised so that Lucius can marry her off to the best pureblood male available (marriage contracts are illegal, but a man paying his father-in-law a tonne of money just following his wedding isn't, so the purebloods are basically acting as though they're still a thing) has never really believed anything that he's told her, since she knows that he doesn't actually care about her. Because of this, she doesn't really believe in pureblood supremacy and is much more pragmatic and thoughtful than Draco was, since he basically accepted his father's word as gospel on any and all topics.**


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